THE Tembari Children's Care (TCC) Inc is a day care facility at ATS Oro Settlement, 7-Mile, outside of Port Moresby, PNG. To date, it takes care of more than 200 former street children - orphans, abandoned and the unfortunate - by serving them meals twice a day, and providing them early education. Assistance - food and money - is sent by supporters who find merit in the services we provide to these children. At The Center, they are family. For all of these, we need support that is sustainable.

Monday, May 23, 2011

AT LAST, the Tembari center will now enjoy the benefits of electricity.

The last process of linking the center to the PNG Power grid at ATS Oro Settlement at 7-Mile outside of Port Moresby came with the installation of an Esipay meter on Thursday, May 19.

Bringing power to, and setting up a water facility at, the center had been the two biggest projects that Rishabh had worked hard on. These were the projects critical in helping improve the day-to-day lives of our more than 170 beneficiary children.

The water tank – a 1,000-gallon container – was installed early this year, courtesy of RH Foundation, and the bulk water supplied by a private contractor to fill it up once a month is being shouldered by fishing company High Energy Co of Port Moresby, one of our regular donors.

The task of linking the center to the settlement’s power grid began about middle of last year when I emailed Eileen Lloyds, PNG Power’s public affairs executive, about the center’s wish to get power service.

As a day care center looking after many children from the village who are orphans, abandoned and neglected, Tembari never had electricity since being founded in 2003 by Penny Sage-Embo.

On the same day, Mr Koiri immediately instructed his managing director John Tangit to start the ball rolling on behalf of Tembari as part of the company’s community service.

The CEO said the power facility would be installed at PNG Power’s cost.

PNG Power needed to erect at least three steel posts to bring the power lines to the center, which is about 400 meters away from the last power post at the settlement. This was done sometime last March.

Now, I did not mind the delays that came with the exercise. I was aware that as a corporate entity, PNG Power also had many financial constraints experienced by many other companies. Such could have contributed to the wait lasting for quite a while.

What is important now is that we got electricity and with it are a number of things that we know would benefit much our children in the long run.

The first thing that I had acquired for Tembari to make use of electricity is a set of personal computer. The PC was a donation from The National newspaper.

With this facility, we can now speed up the process of updating the records of more than 70 schoolchildren and close to 100 preschoolers.

The most important of these records are the individual profiles of our beneficiary children, which have been earlier done in handwriting alongside their school records. Both are now waiting to be processed electronically.

And not to mention important communications that we intended to send to prospective grant-giving institutions, corporate and individual donors.

We have long planned to introduce our preschoolers to educational programs available on DVDs. I am certain that our children have not yet seen such kind of educational entertainment designed to enhance their learning process.

We intend to present a particular show everyday after the noon time snacks that follow their morning classes.

This way, our preschoolers and younger kids would keep themselves busy the whole afternoon watching kiddy shows like Sesame Street, Bananas in Pyjamas and Dora, among many others.

We hope that the exercise would introduce them to many new things that would add up to their everyday learning process.

But this plan would not be possible unless we have a DVD player and a modest TV screen monitor.

It is for this reason that I am seeking assistance to generous individuals who are able to donate to Tembari a set of DVD player and the accompanying TV monitor.

We would also welcome donations in the form of DVDs of children’s programming that your kids had already outgrown with.

Indeed, the coming of electricity to Tembari would finally introduce our beneficiary children to a lot of new things needed in their day to day learning.

On our part, we are doing our best to give them at least a bit of what the rest of fortunate children around the world are enjoying in life.

If you think you are able to help us on this, please don’t hesitate to call me on 722-31984 or 3246-712 or email me at

THE BLOGGER

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, A Friend of Tembari Children. Blogger APH came to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1993 to join The National newspaper as one of its pioneering journalists. Working as Executive Sub Editor, he has remained with the daily, now the country’s No. 1 newspaper, up to these days. He has been a journalist since his university days in Manila back in the late 60s. APH’s involvement with the Tembari children began in January 2010 after he discovered them at a Christmas party for the city’s 500 unfortunate children held at the Botanical Garden in Port Moresby. That day, he was chasing a story for The National, which happened to be that of the unfortunate children in the city. His self-appointed job for Tembari children composed of orphaned, abandoned, neglected and unfortunate children is to look for people and groups who could provide them food, money, health services and facilities necessary to create positive changes in their lives. This job is difficult, but what the heck …!

(Our sponsored Saturday lunch for the 200 Tembari kids costs only K250.00 per sponsor (we usually have two), which covers a special meat (fish or chicken) dish, veggies, steamed rice and cordial drink. The Saturday lunch needs at least two sponsors. Some had given more, allowing us to give the kids a generous heap of the day’s lunch. A rare bonus to the sponsors, along with the bricks they earn each time, is that I personally cook the dish, giving it a personal touch. And as they earn a brick, each of our benefactors also earn a passage into the heart of the Tembari kids, which is also a prepaid ticket to Heaven.)